


The Unwanted Prince (the Lindwurm)

by fire_is_my_happy_place



Series: Myth Shorts [2]
Category: Scandanavian mythology
Genre: Body Horror, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Snakes, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:26:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_is_my_happy_place/pseuds/fire_is_my_happy_place
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An infertile queen makes a deal to bear children, but her greed nearly costs her the kingdom. The pity of a witch allows an unnamed commoner to prevent a war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unwanted Prince (the Lindwurm)

A queen’s tears are precious, the body’s ocean pouring out helpless beneath the ruddy veins of sight. The ceremony that made a king married him to the land, the queen’s body becoming the land below and sewn in fertile rut.

This is what they had been told, but the Queen stayed slim-waisted and silent, no matter the seed planted in her. Doctors came, beards waggling over their robes as they proscribed courses of leeches and strange exercises that failed, to their sardonic surprise. They left, as did a discrete parade of stable boys and smiths, soldiers and farriers from the Queen’s chambers at midday.

The Queen was a realist and knew that love may rival the sun in splendor, but did little to keep the barons from eyeing the King and murmuring about cleansing the land. The King, for his part, was the same though it pained him to pretend he did not know. He held her at night wondering if she had been pleased enough to cry aloud. He did not ask. They did not speak.

The Crone had planned to collect her tears that day. The whole kingdom knew, word traveling like light, that the Queen spent the mornings curled in a corner of her garden, weeping. As the Crone found, she also spent it staring, age-haggard and worn, into a rose bush the King had ridden to Damascus to bring her when they were courting.

“Speak,” the Queen said, voice soft as the leaves which caressed themselves on the tree above her.

It was not, as the Crone found, easy as she had thought to ignore the Queen’s grief. Despite herself and the heart she had cut out and buried decades ago beneath her cottage floor, she found herself speaking.

“What troubles you so?”

As she watched, the Queen curled her fingers in the fertile soil. When the Queen met her gaze, it was clear and resolute, though her lashes were webbed. “There will be war,” she said quietly. “There will be war, and we cannot stop it. Gather your family and go from this place, so that at least some may escape.”

The voice of the land crying out, the Queen in her mourning for those she bore like the children she could not. The Crone sighed and spoke, her tongue slurring with its slit. “A deal, noble lady.”

The Queen re-examined her, surprised. The hunched figure in tattered black, gloves and veil she had thought a demand of cleaning became a mystery, a sign of something awry. As the figure waited, she recoiled.

“What are you?”

“Does it matter,” the Crone replied and shifted restlessly beneath the layered cloth. “A deal, noble lady, that will save you all.”

The Queen folded her muddied hands in her lap, trapping a clot between them. Spirit or human, monster or fable, if magic would do what no man could, she stood ready. “The terms?”

“They are simple.” The Crone’s voice lingered, sibilant. “Your tears for a child.”

The Queen’s face bloomed, morning light pouring gold over her in forgiveness. “Done.”

And with that, the Crone stepped forward and, drawing a gloved hand back, slapped the Queen across her face. The ruddy blush of pain did not dim the Queen’s smile, and it was the work of a moment to capture her tears.

“Know this,” the Crone said. “I will leave to you the future of the kingdom. Favor you the land, and a daughter should you have. Favor you the people, and you should bear a son.” She drew the Queen to her feet. “Choose.”

The Queen’s face grew troubled, brows dark and arching drawing down over her eyes. “How shall I make my choice?”

The Crone shrugged. “I will part with no more of my wisdom. Should you wish a son, take to bed the King in his splendor. Should you wish a daughter, any other man will do. By dusk will you have made your choice, or remain barren.” She paused, looking at the Queen before her with a twinge of remembered humanity.

“I will do you one mercy,” she said to the Queen softly. “Desire fled you long ago, no matter what the King may believe. You sold yourself for the love of the land to that which you did not want. Close your eyes and remain thus until I have gone, no matter what happens to you.”

As the Queen’s eyelids fluttered closed, the Crone threw back her veil, stripping the gloves from her scaled fingers. The Queen shivered in fear as those fingers tilted back her head, then muffled her scream as the Crone sank fangs into her neck.

Pain lancing, the body panicking and then—the blood in her veins whispering, heart that sang, the Queen became a terrible pyre on which all else burned. The Crone pulled back to lower her veil and realized that the Queen was watching her.

“You will have cause to regret that,” the Crone hissed.

The Queen merely watched the dreadful fangs fold back in the Crone’s mouth, the great, slit-pupiled eyes disappearing as the veil dropped. One hand crept to the sluggishly bleeding holes in her neck and the Queen drew a sharp breath.

“If you do not choose soon,” the Crone said mockingly, “you will make no choices. Had I known you a fool, I would not have given you this gift.”

The Queen reached out for her, mute, but the Crone danced away and, spry as a snake, disappeared into the garden paths. The guards found her standing there at the accustomed time, rooted by the earth she could feel yielding to a plow as a lover some miles distant. The first to touch her found her wild as cat and twice as strong, and his companion did not have enough time to unfasten his breeches before the Queen took him as well. Both were quite willing to help.

When they could stand no longer, the Queen staggered away, searching, searching and finding the King where he sat in the great hall considering a map of the land, armies moving in his head. The guards had barely time to clear the room before she drove his thoughts from him entirely, the fever in her veins spreading to him with a single touch.

The guards kept the doors closed, turning away nobles and servants, commoners and wanderers and every other soul who gathered to hear the noise coming from within it. It was nightfall before they left the room, holding each other up like invalids. They slept coiled about each other as the dead might, and rose late to stare wordlessly at each other with the pallid tang of fear.

Not a single soul in the castle was surprised when the Queen cast off her slim gowns, growing round as the moon and glowing with it, though the barons were quite disappointed. For her part, thinking of that day and the garden, the Queen hoped for twins. The King merely wandered in a friendly haze, accepting thanks and gifts alike with bemused wonder.

When her water rushed from her during dinner, the guards ushered him away to do what fathers must, pacing the halls as the Queen did battle. For twelve hours, she fought and brought forth a fat child, a boy who cast a disappointed gaze at the women around him and bleated his anger. Her belly still rippled as they wrapped him up, and with tender anticipation she pushed. The child’s torso was milk pale, its eyes closed, and the next push found delicate scales across his hips. The midwife screamed but did not drop him as his legs appeared, fused, a thick tail. The Queen looked down at him, trembling, but the midwife backed away.

“Do not,” the woman said, her voice hoarse in horror, “undo the peace of the last few months. See him not, and he will remain unseen.”

The Queen covered her eyes and wept as the midwife passed out of the room, the infant tucked under her ragged blouse. The midwife set him in the river’s current and went back to the castle, giving to death as she had given to life. Unseen, the infant floated out past the walls of the castle and was gone.

When the heralds sang out the birth of a son, the kingdom rejoiced with their King. The Queen merely sat, a doll in fine clothing, and listened to the voice of the priest who anointed her son, cleansing him from sin. The midwife said nothing, and for her service was given a grand home that she gave to orphans and unwanted children.

As the years passed, the Queen was happy to forget the whole day, devoted to the rearing of a son who was, in all appearances, normal. He grew fat, and then tall in the way of boys, sturdy legs and chubby cheeks giving way to broad shoulders and the sullen anger of youth. When the barons grew restless again, they sent emissaries out to the surrounding kingdoms, to seek him a wife.

An exchange of portraits, discrete negotiations over her dowry, and a procession came to gather up a princess and make her a queen. Travel was easy, the spring kind, and they were approaching the castle when the figure rounded the hill. The first gust of wind bought a dry, rank scent to the horses, who panicked no less than their riders. Standing seven feet from his scaled belly to head, the unwanted prince watched them from the ragged thatch of his hair.

“And so,” he hissed, “they honor him as they have never honored me.”

The princess’ horse threw her as he slithered closer, her guards forming a ring about her as she lay, stunned, on the packed dirt of the road. The unwanted prince looked down at her hair as it tumbled, pale and bright, from the silk of her hat, at the slim flutes of her ankles and the terror in her eyes.

“Tell them this,” he said, voice tight with anger. “A bride for me before my brother or the land will know there is another.”

He smiled at the princess, and she watched the bone daggers of his fangs peek over his rough lips faint with fear. “Before the end of the day, my lady,” he said and sketched a small bow.

At that, the unwanted prince slithered off. The princess had hysterics and the guards were forced to feed her the entire contents of an illicit flask before they could get her back on a horse and into the castle. She screamed when she saw the King and Queen waiting for her, but it was from her guards they got the story.

The King sent the Queen to a small room in a tower, scarlet with rage, and locked her in it over the protests of her maids and their son. When he was capable of speech, he called his advisors together.

When the unwanted prince surfaced from the river, they met him with a maid wearing the princess’ best gown. The unwanted prince laughed at them and turned to go, unappeased until they bought him the princess, still insensate. They were married by declaration of the King, his voice hard as stone. At the insistence of his new son, the princess was carried to a chamber. They were locked in, and the King spent the night trying to compose a letter to her father.

In the morning, the guards opened the chamber doors and found the unwanted prince sleeping alone. He merely smiled when they woke him to ask where she had gone, a razored grin that half-closed his eyes. He flung a dress at them, the seams torn, and slithered out.

The King’s advisors had the guards that had come with her killed, and wrote the letter for him as he lay in the chapel, face pressed to the uncaring stone as he wept. The letter spoke of a spooked horse, an accident, and offered the kingdom’s sorrow. The barons raised armies, and his advisors sent more portraits out.

In her chamber, the Queen sat at a window and stared out into the empty sky. Their son, unknowing, mourned his dead bride. Their other son digested.

The second princess met the same fate, as did the third, and a fourth before no kingdom would permit an emissary in its borders that came wearing the King’s blood and sable. The barons patrolled their borders and feathered anything that wore a tabard.

When the unwanted prince surfaced from the river, he was met by the King’s advisors. Threats, promises, bribes, and even poison he shrugged off with a laugh, asking after the health of his mother and father with wicked eyes. They could not answer him. He asked for a bride, and as their faces went ashen returned to the water, to wait.

Fathers locked up their daughters, mothers their kin, and no woman walked the street at any cost. Fearing revolt, the advisors did what they must, a soldier climbing stealthy over the gate of the midwife’s house and grabbing the first girl to empty her chamber pot that night.

They let her walk the garden as they made the dress. It was there the Crone found her, a wren of a girl perched in a tree to consider the high garden walls.

When the Crone laid a gloved hand on the tree, the girl looked down at her.

“What,” the girl said bitterly, “now?”

The Crone watched her for a moment, the determination that made her try, even now, to find an escape, before responding with the simplest question. “Do you want to live?”

The girl’s laugh soared high and cracking above them, but the Crone waited patiently. When she could laugh no more, the girl replied.

“I would do anything,” she said. “Anything.”

The Crone smiled. The tears of a Queen have their magic, even greater when the woman that shed them despairs but fades not. “Save your tears but not your ears, for if you will not obey you will die.”

The girl listened.

When the advisors came for her, they found her wearing a wreath of blue flowers and thorns. She refused to take it off before it had done its work. Out of pity, they acceded to this and her other demands, supplying her with a bundle of hazel branches, still young and springy, a spool of red thread, a pile of shifts, and a milk bath.

She wore every shift to the wedding, the wreath sending sharp fingers into her scalp as she spoke the words, branches tied to a whip with red thread. She could barely bend her arms for the cloth as they sealed her in with the unwanted prince.

As the lock clanked loudly in the silence, he turned to her. “You know what I will do, do you not?”

She merely looked at him, the wreath rustling with her breath.

“Will you save me the effort, maiden,” he said, mocking, as he slithered a slow circle around her.

“A deal, dear Prince, since that is what made you.” She bounced the branches against her thigh with a clack.

The prince held a hand to his chest in mock horror. “A deal? A game?” He paused, then smiled. “Food who wishes to play. Very well.”

“I’ll shed a shift,” she said, voice reedy, “if you will shed a skin.”

After a shocked moment, the unwanted prince laughed. Running his hands down his hips, he peeled a thin layer from them and waited for her disgust. Instead, she wriggled out of a shift and pointed at his tail with the branches. Lifting his tail, he pulled the last of it from him and left a white shell behind, his scales pale and bright.

“You are still dressed,” he said.

“You have not shed another skin,” she replied, and bounced the branches against her thigh again. His eyes watched them greedily, the slit pupils swallowing the light, and then complied.

She caught his gaze with it, the branches, the flowers of her crown making the room heavy and sweet. He did not notice his scales becoming paler, larger, only the slowly thinning cloth between her body and his eyes, and the bundle that tapped her leg restlessly.

She pulled the last shift off slowly, but only after he had started to wriggle out of his skin. She did not trust him. When he leaned down to pull the skin away, she raised the branches and beat him.

Sprawling flat, the unwanted prince merely shivered at the bright stripes she was raising across his back, cheek pressed to the floor with something like a smile. She stood over him until the branches broke and his skin bloomed in bloody flowers. When she threw them aside, the unwanted prince rolled over to look up at her. She reached out and pulled him up. They stood together, sweat wet and silent.

He let her lead him to the bath, then fell as she pushed him in. She held his head under so he could not hear the charm the Crone had taught her, a magic that could be used by no man. As she whispered it, the crown fell from her head, blue petals and black thorns a shock against the bath’s white. A single drop of blood fell from her forehead to the water, curdling a dark spot in it before streaming out. She stepped back and wiped her forehead against her arm. It was done. Her blood and his, mother’s milk and the pain that flowered between them had finished the charm.

What emerged from the milk was nearly a man, though his eyes made a lie of it, green as a new leaf and still split. He was also angry until he stepped out of the bath to strike her back. They froze thus, his fist raised and her staring fearless at it. Looking down, he found himself human and speechless, and bent to run trembling hands down his legs.

She reached out and opened his mouth. Slim fangs folded down. She touched one and he watched her.

“What am I,” he whispered.

She only smiled and drew him to bed like that, milk-wet and sticky, the fever of youth in his bite.

In the morning, the guards opened the door. They had prepared to haul away yet another pile of cloth, or worse what the prince could not digest.

They found the prince sitting in her lap.

**Author's Note:**

> There's about a million versions of this tale in Scandanavia and Slavic mythology. Dragons and serpents are a fairly common presence in many world myths, and while I'm borrowing a touch from a certain 19th century retelling of this, it diverges rather sharply in several key ways. The Lindworm itself comes from a fascinating cluster of legends. It's worth looking up.


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